Interview with Michael Gibbons
Michael Gibbons
Principal, Leadership<>Learning
202-441-3054
mjgibbons
starpower [dot] net
Michael Gibbons is currently an independent consultant. A former Peace Corps volunteer, he has worked and consulted with CARE, Save the Children, Banyan Tree Foundation, UNICEF, and CRS, and sits on the boards of several other international NGOs.
For 30 years, I have worked in international social development at a number of different capacities – community agriculture extension agent/field worker, Peace Corps training center director, associate director for national refugee assistance program, CARE country-level advisor, Save the Children US country program director, Save the Children US headquarters technical advisor and deputy director, Banyan Tree Foundation associate director (funding NGO work in basic education and child rights), board member of Tostan (Senegal NGO), external advisor for BASE (Nepal NGO). I have been a professor of international education at American University, and have served as a consultant to UNICEF, Catholic Relief Service, Inter-agency Network for Emergency Education, and UMass Center for International Education.
Growing up in New York in the 1950s and 60s, the UN was a great symbol of hope and ideals for me. I attended Williams College, where I was challenged intellectually and I made some great friends, but I felt out of place in terms of class and political orientation. I was among the last cohort that confronted and resisted participation in the Vietnam War. Unlike most of my classmates, I joined Peace Corps right out of college and I’ve never looked back. Even though I did not study international affairs or development, Williams provided me with strong analytical skills that I still use.
Peace Corps was a powerful and difficult experience, and provided many good early development lessons. Immediately following Peace Corps I went off the grid to visit spiritual communities and alternative programs in Europe and New England, deliberately giving grad school a pass. I returned to the Peace Corps to direct the agriculture training center in the United States and that began my formal career in this line of work. Extended periods of time living and working in the Andes and South Asia with CARE and Save the Children were wonderful but also very challenging. While in Sri Lanka I confronted civil war, heavy-duty corruption and major management headaches, and this was a season of growing for me.
My pathway through Save the Children, a large multi-dimensional NGO, was varied and interesting while being highly instructive. But eventually I outgrew it. That led me to a mid-career MA/PhD, working on my own terms. Banyan Tree Foundation, a small start-up private foundation supporting international work, was next. That was a great complimentary and stretching experience.
At the moment I am working as an independent consultant while I work to define my next job in international development. My vision is to create mechanisms/protocols that will provide tailor-made support to social activists and leaders who run innovative projects in basic education and children’s rights in Africa and South Asia, regions where millions are not in school. I am engaged in related consulting tasks as I look for institutions interested in these aims to partner with.
It has been a good run; I’m still passionate and going strong!
